Without A Care
by RomeroNation
Summary: One man tries to survive in a world overcome by the living dead.


Without A Care: Volume 1

By Jason "Pubehead" Montgomery

It is safe to say that in the past few weeks, the country hasn't exactly been in ship-shape condition. A fly-by over any major city would reveal scenes of general chaos and destruction, such as flaming buildings and totaled cars. But, oddly enough, from a distance it will seem as if everything is normal. Despite the aforementioned abnormalities, you will witness what could be any normal day in the big city. Thousands of people would be walking the streets, apparently doing their daily business, as if nothing was awry. But a closer approach would reveal that all was not well.

What you would find upon closer examination is a city in which the dead wander the streets, aimlessly walking in random directions, only changing their courses when they reach an obstruction. You will witness the former shells of human beings, reanimated corpses with no thoughts, ambitions, or even emotions. But as harmless and empty-minded as they seem, you would not want to get too close to them. In fact, such an experiment as approaching one of these things unarmed and unprepared would yield less than stellar results. But if that is how you get off, by all means, try to engage one in a friendly conversation.

Anyway, this story is not of the "incident" in general, but of a single man, a man who instead of conforming to the ranks of the undead, fights to keep on living his life, day by day.

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The town of Barkingwood, Georgia, is not exactly a large city. In fact, it would be stretching the truth just to say it is a small town, for the population barely exceeds one hundred people. Well, it used to barely exceed a hundred people. Nowadays that number has been reduced to about one. Before the crisis began, the only semi-interesting feature of Barkingwood was the decorated Vietnam War sharpshooter, James Lockwolf. In itself, this isn't very interesting, but ever since James returned from the war, he has spent every single day sitting on his roof, watching over the town, rifle in hand. Being the only feasible landmark of Barkingwood, it was not uncommon to hear in a set of directions to "make a right turn past the house with the man sitting on the roof" or something along those lines. Some said he was crazy, while others claimed that his immense body count during the war haunted the man, driving him to believe that the only means through which he could repent himself would be to watch over and protect the town with the weapon he so proficiently used. But in truth, the reason James loves sitting on his roof with his gun is that after spending months camping outside during the war with only his rifle and survival knife keeping him alive, James was never again comfortable with the indoors. And as for the rifle, he would never allow Big Betty to leave his side.

When the outbreak began, no one in the town of Barkingwood was genuinely prepared to survive for extended periods of time. Before the crisis began, if they ever needed supplies they would just drive over to the next town over, never buying enough food to last more than three weeks. James of course is an exception to this demeanor, for one very important lesson he learned coming out of the war is that anything can happen, and you can never be too prepared for the unexpected. Like a true paranoid redneck, James' cellar contained enough canned food, bottled water, and beef jerky to last him a decade. I mean, what else was he going to spend his pension checks on? Video games? Sports cars? Being out in the middle of nowhere, he isn't constricted to the vices so commonly engrossing Americans. In fact, there is nothing he despises more than all these Best Buy-dependant, television-addicted, riddalin-popping pussies that call themselves Americans.

But, before I begin James' story, let's talk about how the zombies first reached the town of Barkingwood. It all began with a lone member of the undead, who after managing to overpower and pass the 42nd Street police station's barricade, ventured a few miles south of Atlanta. Reaching a small house in the middle of the woods, this zombie met its end on the receiving side of a 12-gauge shotgun, but not before biting a nickel-sized hole out of the shotgun-wielding hermit's arm. Because the hermit had neither a telephone nor a television, he felt it necessary to walk over to the nearby town of Johnston to report the incident and obtain some medical attention for his arm, which was now showing signs of infection. By the time he reached town, the man had broken out in a cold sweat, and when he finally reached the hospital, the 250 lb. hermit plummeted stomach-first into the pavement.

Believing that the man fainted due to a mere loss of blood, the hermit was admitted into the hospital to receive blood transfusion treatments. When the nurses came into the man's room for preparation, he managed to take chunks out of nurse #1's neck and nurse #2's leg. Within an hour, the entire population of bedridden patients had turned. Luckily, the rest of the staff and mobile patients managed to escape with nary a scratch. Actually, that's a lie. One of the patients was scratched, and for all he knew, he was fine.

But he wasn't, and Roy McCulloch would find that out soon enough. Roy and the unlucky aforementioned patient were assigned as sweep partners. Their job was to simply wander the woods in bright day-glow vests, disposing of any "walkers" they were to come across. In order to complete this job, all volunteers were giving a firearm of various calibers (Roy received a Gloch .45 and the unlucky patient was handed a small .357 Carbine), a jug of gasoline, and enough food to last a week. As chance would happen, none of these items would come to use, for after about 4 eventless hours, Roy was consumed by the unlucky patient. But not so thoroughly consumed that he was unable to get back up.

As the newly reanimated Roy wandered through the woods, he came across a defenseless little sleeping fox. This brings us to the last link in the chain of events which led to the spread of infection in Barkingwood. The next morning, as farmer Dock was prepping for the long day he had (or at least he thought he had) ahead, he had to promptly dispose of a seemingly rabid fox with a full blast of buck-shot emanating from his trusty shotgun. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, this was not before the little fucker bit a hole into his ankle.

I think that anyone reading this can guess what happened next, so I will save space and time and just join back up with James, still sitting on his roof with Big Betty resting to his right side. But on this morning, the circumstances are slightly different.

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So here we are with James. Every day for the past 30 (or was it 31? Oh fuck it, it doesn't matter) years James has sat on his roof, watching over what is quite possibly the most boring town in the good old U.S. of A. During the 14 hours James spends on his roof every day, only a few things happen, and never anything else. Other than little Robbie Morrison riding his bike past his house, Rover the cocker spaniel digging around in the field across the street, and the occasional tourist (more like cousin of a town resident who wants to look at the crazy roof-man), nothing bigger than a bird or squirrel would come into James' little field of vision.

As previously stated, this morning was slightly out of the ordinary. In fact, this is most likely the first time James has climbed up to his roof to find that his house has been surrounded by nearly a hundred zombies. But does James' heart skip a beat? I think not. Like a true man, instead of losing his head and getting himself eaten, James calmly boarded up his house, cleaned out Big Betty, pocketed a box of bullets, and climbed back up as if nothing was wrong.

When James was stocking up his basement/bomb shelter, he was anticipating something along the lines of a nuclear winter, or even a tornado. But not an army of the undead. And for this reason, the one necessity that James failed to stockpile was the one thing he so desperately needed now: ammunition. But alas, he did not "freak out," for nothing good would come out of that. So as James took his seat on the roof, he tallied his rounds, coming to a mere 47 shots, and then conducted a headcount of his besiegers, an uncomfortable 98. Oh well, he's a manly man. He'll find a way out.


End file.
